As part of our Hip-Hop 50 celebration, we’re turning the clock back 25 years to see how the genre was changed at the midpoint of its history by two individuals: DMX and Lauryn Hill. Make sure to check out all our Hip-Hop 50 content throughout the month, and snag some exclusive merch featuring our Hip-Hop 50 design at the Consequence Shop.
There are fulcrum points throughout history, moments upon which everything shifts. Hip-hop found itself pivoting upon such a point in the middle of 1997. Without exhausting already exhausted details, tragedy overshadowed the previous year and ’97’s early months. Losing Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G. back-to-back changed the tenor as the media then — and even now — blamed their deaths on a coastal war.
Following their passing, the hardcore hip-hop albums that dominated cash registers in the early to mid-’90s just didn’t have the same impact. Artists, most notably Puff Daddy (now Diddy) and the rest of his Bad Boy Records crew, turned their pain into celebration. A genre and culture built on giving a voice to the voiceless now draped itself in opulence that only seemed accessible for those with a cheat code.
As John Norris noted in an MTV Rockumentary (yup, that was a thing), some felt the music lost its creative muscle during this time period. Producers sampled hit songs from previous decades for their own smash records, and lyrics leaned too much into decadence instead of the genre’s “Black CNN” roots. “Hip-hop had become overly aspirational and shiny, full of vivid technicolors,” said former Def Jam co-president Lyor Cohen in a FADER oral history.
Like most of us on the precipice of a quarter-life crisis, the music and the culture had a choice: continue down this path or reinvent itself.
When hip-hop turned 25 in 1998, that transformation came in the form of DMX, Lauryn Hill, and the shock waves felt from their seismic debut solo albums — two of the greatest rap albums of all time. Most rappers talk about changing the game; these two actually did.
One look at Billboard’s top rap singles from ’97 underscores with exclamation points the degree to which X and Hill would soon tilt the rap world on its axis:
“No Time” by Lil’ Kim, “Cold Rock a Party” by MC Lyte, “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” by Puff Daddy featuring Ma$e, “Hypnotize” by The Notorious B.I.G., “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans featuring 112, “Mo Money, Mo Problems” by The Notorious B.I.G. featuring Puff Daddy and Ma$e, “Up Jumps Da Boogie” by Timbaland and Magoo featuring Missy Elliot and Aaliyah, “Feels So Good” by Ma$e, “Been Around the World” by Puff Daddy featuring The Notorious B.I.G. and Ma$e.
